Dari Taylor: In my constituency, I have many young people who excel at classical music, pop and jazz, both vocal and instrumental. How is the Department encouraging businesses to financially support the development of those young people, what is the Department doing to make sure that those businesses feel included in such partnerships?

Estelle Morris: The role of business is important. We will never get to a situation, nor should we, where the arts receive funding only from the Government, centrally and locally. It is important that all sections of society contribute to something so central to our lives. With my hon. Friend, I recognise the contribution that business has made in constituencies outside London and in London. As regards the Department's involvement, through the Arts Council we fund Arts and Business, which has the express task of making sure that businesses offer as much to arts and music as they can. If my hon. Friend wants to know more about that, she should look at the details of what Arts and Business has achieved, and she will see that it is a steadily growing amount. I take the opportunity to thank Arts and Business for its business sponsorship, and all businesses for the money that they put into the arts.

Gordon Prentice: Whether it is her intention to discount the BBC licence fee for licence holders who cannot receive BBC digital services.
	The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Tessa Jowell): It is not my intention to discount the BBC licence fee for licence holders who cannot get BBC digital services. Rather, my intention is to accelerate the process and preparation for digital switchover, so that all can receive that service.

Estelle Morris: I agree that since free admissions were introduced it is good to see an increase in visitors to all the museums that used to charge. The statistic that my hon. Friend quotes is pretty similar for all museums in that category. I would argue a little about the increase in grant. I am not sure that the museum has received a smaller grant than others. It is about 22.9 per cent. I accept, however, that that includes money to enable free admissions. We hope to continue investing in the arts, including museums, and further announcements will made in due course when we announce the results of the spending round.

Kelvin Hopkins: I am almost aghast when I consider where to start. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) sounded to me like the leader of a gang of vandals blaming those trying to clear up the mess for creating it in the first place. I have my own speech to make, but I could spend an hour or so simply responding to what I have just heard.
	I welcome the Bill in so far as it is another significant step away from the disasters of privatisation and back towards the sanity of public ownership of Britain's railways. I believe that it is a staging post towards transfer of power from the SRA to the Secretary of State, and towards public accountability. There are those who are concerned about that prospect because, although Ministers are known to be committed to the railways, the Department does not have a glorious record for supporting the railways. I hope that it has had a change of heart, and that it now has officials who are dedicated to the railways—as, indeed, am I. I speak as one who has travelled to work by rail every day for 35 years, and I have a considerable interest in railways, not just because I am a commuter but because I think that they are a vital part of our economy. Our economy could not operate without our railways. Indeed, I think that they should be expanded, to the benefit of us all.
	There are ongoing concerns. Indeed, there are concerns about the Bill, but we should dwell on what has happened since privatisation, because that is where the problem has lain. The costs to the Exchequer have been enormous. Public subsidies per journey have been multiplied by five in 10 years, and track renewal costs have been multiplied by four. In British Rail's time, the average cost of a mile of rail track was about £350,000. It is now between £1.5 million and £2 million. That is way beyond inflation; even if one takes account of inflation, the cost is at least three times higher than it was.
	Non-rolling stock investment has risen from about £1 billion 10 years ago to nearly £5 billion. I only wish that output had risen by the same amount. At that time there was a system for measuring output called CRWS. I cannot remember what the acronym stands for, but it was developed by BR to keep careful control of costs and ensure that it was getting value for money. That was conveniently junked by Railtrack when it took over, because it thought that markets and competition would take care of efficiency. How wrong it was.
	The privateers have, effectively, been ripping off the taxpayer with a complex network of overlapping and inter-letting companies paying each other out of public money. The Treasury has been treated as a milch cow by the private companies, and that is where the money has gone.
	Let us look at some examples of how the scams operate. There are lots of agencies hiring staff to companies in the industry. Typically, an engineer may be paid £100 to £150 a day, but the agency hiring to the subcontractor will charge three times that amount, just pocketing the cash. A bridge should have cost £3 million to build but the charge was £12 million. The old BR engineers who know how much such things should cost were kept well away from the schemes, as was anyone who had anything to do with Government or the Treasury. Companies want to make sure that they get their money.
	There are frequent press reports about the proportion of profit made by rolling stock leasing companies. Typically, there is a 30 per cent. leasing charge for rolling stock. As the money eventually comes out of the public purse or from the fare payer, they are not particularly worried, but 30 per cent. return for a leasing contract is outrageous—and as I have said, track renewal costs are now four times as high as they were.
	What happens when a contract is undertaken? The company takes the specification and works rigidly to that specification, even if it is wrong and it can see that there are little mistakes, because it knows that it will be inspected, the mistakes will be found and it will get another contract to put right the mistakes that it failed to deal with in the first contract. It is making money—why should it worry?
	Contrast that with the days of BR, when track work was undertaken by direct employees working to tight cash limits and making necessary corrections when jobs were in process. The recently published Catalyst report suggests that Britain's railways, far from being inefficient, were the most efficient in Europe. There was under-investment and they were under-financed, but they were efficient. They had the lowest subsidy, but the highest productivity. One can have high productivity in an under-invested company, because to keep the show on the road, it has to operate efficiently. That is what the railways used to do.
	The shadow Minister said something recently about "ramshackle" BR—but Tom Winsor, the rail regulator, said in my hearing in the past year that BR handed over the industry to the privateers "in good order". Despite decades of under-investment, it was in good order. Engineers and people who worked directly in the industry really cared about what was happening. Contrast that with what happens now.
	Public ownership worked and privatisation does not. Under public ownership, there was direct employment. We saw the integration of operations and track work. The cash limits made a real difference. At the time, perhaps we did not like cash limits because they made life more difficult, but we have engineers in the other place who say that they worked ingeniously to use the money as best they could to ensure that they did the best possible job within the cash limit.

Kelvin Hopkins: I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention.
	As I said, I travel by train every day. I may be a bit of a trainspotter, but I listen for wheel flats—that is when the wheels make a banging noise on the track because they have not been reground. The ROSCOs—rolling stock companies—are not concerned, because it only damages the track, and they charge the cost to the public purse or the travelling passenger. Almost every train has at least one wheel flat and some have six or seven. That damages the track and the trains—but who cares, because someone else is paying?
	My final point relates to public ownership. Ministers have said that that would cost a lot of money. The reality is that have we paid out such vast sums in the past 10 years that any cost of bringing the railways back into public ownership would be miniscule by comparison. The track is effectively in public ownership already. The franchises can be handed over to a public sector organisation as and when they mature. The rolling stock is the only thing that the public would have to buy back—but they do not even have to do that, because they could negotiate a better deal with the ROSCOs and pay less, at least for the foreseeable future. So there is no problem of cost.
	The real argument is, unfortunately, political. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Tyneside, North (Mr. Byers) did the necessary and important job of getting rid of Railtrack and bringing activities into Network Rail as a stage towards public ownership, I publicly congratulated him on that. He was applauded by Labour Members, although he got great deal of flak from Conservative Members, no doubt representing the shareholding interest.
	We now know that my right hon. Friend was told by the Prime Minister that whatever he did, he was not to nationalise the railways. Unfortunately, that pushed the brake. The Prime Minister is the leader of the Government and he had his say. However, I refer hon. Members to the recent report by the Transport Committee, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), which says:
	"the Government needs to keep an open mind on the provision of these services directly by the public sector."
	I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to take note of that, and to keep an open mind on public ownership in the future. That is the way forward. Privatisation has been a disastrous failure.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: I welcome the opportunity to speak after the hon. Gentleman, not least because I have always wanted to say Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, which is such a wonderful title.
	The Bill is important, but small. If we choose to criticise certain aspects, it is not because we fail to regard it as a positive assessment of the real problems that the railway industry faces. Rather, it is because we want to tell the Government that they are doing pretty well, but ask them if they can please do a little bit better.
	It is important to understand that some of the problems arising are not new, but need a bit of new and lateral thinking. It is essential for the Government to provide very firm leadership. The Strategic Rail Authority did not provide it and in the new round of franchises, we must be quite clear about what passengers want, what efficiencies are needed and what changes are necessary.
	I hope that the Secretary of State will look closely into what is happening in the centre of the railway system around Birmingham. It is a sort of central node, yet the organisation of the services is, frankly, not working. People experience great difficulties there, but an opportunity exists now that much of the rolling stock and diesels have been freed up and are available to run longer services; from the south-west to the north-east and from the south-east to the north-west. By using those trains and providing an hourly service, we could begin to sort out some of those difficulties and provide a much higher standard of service for customers.
	When one gets beyond the day-to-day determination of what is needed for the various franchises, it becomes clear that the Railways Bill, which has some useful parts, is worrying in one or two small details. I hope that the Secretary of State will forgive me if I highlight one of them, but I will not be doing the sort of rant about local government personalities that we have heard from Conservative Front Benchers tonight. When I hear determined attempts to make Ken Livingstone into a bogeyman, I wonder whether he has some arrangement with Conservative Members, by which they give him all that free publicity and build him up in a way that, undoubtedly, he warmly welcomes. If they could tell me what the arrangement is, perhaps I could make a contribution and they could demonise me in the same way. I am sure that it would improve my chances of re-election.
	There are some real problems with the franchises. I want to comment briefly on those who are choosing to suggest, for reasons that I do not understand, that the next round of franchises will be greatly influenced by personalities and the relationship between various personalities and various political parties. Whatever one says about granting franchises and whatever one's view of companies' abilities to run the franchises that they take over, I do not think that anyone has seriously suggested that those decisions were taken on the basis of the popularity or otherwise of the management of the companies concerned.
	Yet the rumour is now gaining considerable weight within the eastern region. A case is already being built; if there are any difficulties with GNER, they will be due entirely to the fact that the Labour Government are not prepared to allow certain people to take over certain franchises. That is so bizarre. Usually, I would not bother to comment on such things, but it is important to make it clear once and for all that if we are to retain a franchise system, it will be done simply on the basis of efficiency and value for money for the taxpayer and the passenger.
	Personally, I would like to see much tougher conditions and quality of service written into the franchises. I am sure that the Secretary of State is not only alive to that possibility, but wants to ensure that it happens in the next round. We cannot allow the sort of interpretation of "flexibility of programming" whereby if an efficient and timely service cannot be run, bus substitution or some other cheaper way of providing a service is viewed as acceptable to assist the overall finances without consideration of what that means for the passengers. I am afraid that bus substitution is no substitution for an efficient and competent service.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: I agree. Indeed, the Government should accept that we must have a research unit— including manufacturers, universities with transport departments and the industry generally—that plans new rolling stock, freight services and new provision across the board. We are investing the cash, but we are losing jobs. People in the industry have the right to expect that their expertise be not ignored or forgotten. I am sad that the Bill contains no indication of any such development in the future.
	The changes in the Bill are long overdue. The SRA, for reasons that are well known, was not working. It did not have the powers and it was not capable of translating imaginative leadership into practical results for the rail industry. We desperately need decisions to be taken now. There are worries about the removal of powers from the PTEs to sign rail franchises and the granting of franchises to those who run bus companies; those concerned regard rail and bus services as parallel and do not understand the differences between them. However, the Bill offers an opportunity to begin to bring the benighted rail industry into shape, so that passengers no longer have to demonstrate stoic resignation in the face of difficulties, but can say cheerfully that this is the first Government to commit large sums of money to the   issue, the first to show imagination about the rail industry's problems and the first to deliver the goods.

David Wilshire: I disagree with that argument. Just because someone puts up the money does not mean that they must own everything. I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Luton, North has returned to the Chamber. I am sorry that he missed my comments, and I am sure that he will thoroughly enjoy reading them in Hansard in the morning.
	Not only does the Bill fail to address past mistakes, but it will make at least another mistake that will make matters worse: it will give the Mayor of London more power. I take the strictures suggested by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) not to give names to those people, but the Bill will give the Mayor of London, whoever it may be—the hon. Lady might want to stand for that post one day, who knows?—more power, particularly over things outside London. I shall say why that is a huge mistake in a moment. I worry about another issue that I fear could be a mistake. Again, I shall explain it in a moment. I am worried that, rather than improving safety, the Bill might run the risk of making matters worse in some respects.
	As for the main part of the Bill—the abolition of the SRA—the Secretary of State said that things had gone wrong in the past, but he could not bring himself to say that the SRA was a disaster. It was a good thing—so good that he wants to abolish it. When I intervened on him about that, he accused me of not understanding the reasoned amendment tabled by the Conservative party. Despite the fact that the Secretary of State said that reasoned amendment says that we want to keep the SRA, try as I might— reading and re-reading it—I have failed to find the words "We want to keep the SRA." The Secretary of State was wrong in attributing something to the reasoned amendment that simply is not there. All we say in respect of the SRA is that, in abolishing it, the Government are giving powers to politicians and bureaucrats. That is what we are against in relation to the SRA, as our reasoned amendment makes clear.
	The SRA was not only ineffective, but a waste of money. Let us simply look at the facts of the matter. The Office of Passenger Rail Franchising cost the British taxpayer £13 million and employed 187 staff in 2000–01—its last year in existence before its replacement by the SRA. We are now asked to abolish its replacement, which costs the British taxpayer £102 million and employs 454 people. Not only was the SRA a failure, but it was a waste of time and money too.
	I am only too pleased to support the abolition of the SRA in principle—to that extent, I support what the Government propose in the Bill—but I am not happy to pass the responsibility upwards to politicians and bureaucrats. I want the responsibilities and work passed downwards to where they can really make a difference—to the travelling public.

Graham Stringer: The major influence on the price was the deep underlying philosophy of the Conservative party that it had to do something to get the problem off its hands. On the other side of the equation, ROSCOs—rolling stock companies—were sold off in an unregulated way and were sold on almost immediately for a third more.
	That was the situation that we faced, but it became a great deal worse. Labour Members were keen that the SRA should provide a sensible direction for the disparate rail industry, which, admittedly, was giving a good financial performance. The hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (Sir Teddy Taylor), for example, said on Second Reading of the Railways Bill in 1999 that eventually the railways would be operated without any cost to the public sector. Even though he was right according to his own terms of reference, events proved him wrong.
	Railtrack was not a railway company, so it was not controlled. It turned into a rapacious property development company that paid scant regard to the safety of travellers and passengers. "Broken Rails" by Christian Wolmar sets out in great detail the way in which privatisation of the railways and the establishment of Railtrack led to poor railway maintenance. The chief executive of Railtrack got off extremely lightly. Hon. Members may not know that before the accident at Paddington he claimed that the station was the safest in the world. That was mere bravado, and he was not interested in the problems. Subcontractors to Railtrack and smaller groups were operating at a large profit without any direct control, so it was clear that the chief executive had no idea what was going on.
	Railtrack has now been replaced by Network Rail, and there is a huge subsidy for the railways. It is difficult to know from the figures what is investment and what is subsidy, but the Government have made two attempts prior to the introduction of the present Railways Bill to put things right. I have already talked about Network Rail—[Interruption.] Opposition Members may laugh, but I do not think that the Government got it right at the time, and I do not wish to defend everything that they did. They acted to provide a sensible direction for a disparate industry, which was beginning to show the cracks.
	It is clear, however, that the overlap between the responsibilities of the SRA and the rail regulator were not properly thought through. In its report on the future of the railways, the Transport Committee said that the rail regulator could effectively overrule the SRA, the Secretary of State for Transport and the Treasury and decide how much money went into the railways. I do not believe that that situation was envisaged by the then Secretary of State in 1999; it was a mistake that led to the spending of a great deal of public money, not all of it on investment.
	The Government made another attempt to put things right when they created Network Rail after Railtrack had failed both as a property company and in its fundamental duty of running the railways. Network Rail is an improvement, but it is an odd body, and it is difficult to know whether it is in the public or the private sector. It cannot continue in its present form for long, because there is clearly no direct accountability for the money that is spent, either to shareholders or to the Government. It is run by people with vested interests in the railway system. It may work better than Railtrack did, because those people have the interests of the railways at heart, but it will not work in the medium term.
	I am disappointed that the Bill does not provide for an improvement in the structure of Network Rail. I see the Bill as a step forward, and in the right direction, but I do not believe that Network Rail is the right medium or long-term solution for the railways. We do not know how taxpayers' money is being spent in the rail system. Network Rail is a vehicle for keeping £100 billion worth of debt off the public accounts. Everybody knows that, and it does not seem sensible to keep an unsatisfactory structure in place to hide something that everybody has seen. That is not a long-term solution.
	On the amount of extra money that has been spent and attempts to disaggregate it, Professor Roderick Smith told the Transport Committee that for between £11 billion and £27 billion—the amount of money wasted in the rail system is probably within that range of expenditure—we could have had a new rail system. That is the extraordinary sum that has been wasted.
	I support the Bill, and I will vote for it on Second Reading, because it addresses some of the problems in the rail system. Primarily it addresses the need for public accountability for money. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) did not tell us how the large amounts of public money that have been put into the rail system should be accounted for. I believe that there should be accountability for taxpayers' money, and the Bill makes the Secretary of State accountable. That does not mean that the Secretary of State will control the entire railway system. Many of those responsibilities will remain within the rail regulatory system and within Network Rail, but the Secretary of State will take responsibility for the public money and some of the major strategies involved.
	There are three aspects of the Bill, to which I shall speak briefly. I mentioned the first in response to the contribution from the hon. Member for Spelthorne—the removal of responsibility for health and safety in the rail system from the Health and Safety Executive. I fully support that decision. It is clearly a brave decision for a Secretary of State to take, because if there is an accident—and there can be an accident in any system—people will tend to point the finger at him. That would be the wrong conclusion to come to. It is clear from the evidence to the Select Committee of Mr. Osborne, who for a period was in charge of safety at the HSE, occupying the position recommended by the Cullen inquiry, that the rail industry had lost confidence in the HSE to pursue safety in the rail industry.
	The Select Committee also found many cases of gold-plating—public money spent on minor safety improvements. The money would have been much better spent elsewhere within the transport system. Spending £1 billion in one place to achieve very little improvement in safety means that £1 billion less is being spent elsewhere—for example, on the roads, where 3,000 people a year are killed. I am pleased with the change, and I would hate to see it misrepresented. I was a great supporter of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 when it was introduced—

Tom Harris: That is what I was thinking of. Those MPs may not have any objection to that, but for those of us who represent a constituency in Glasgow, it is worrying.
	Let us remember the ethos behind setting up the passenger transport executives in the first place. They were initially proposed in the White Paper published, I think, by Barbara Castle in 1968. The whole point of them was that they focused on the country's conurbations. A conurbation was defined then, as now, as a metropolitan area whose population exceeded 1 million. Using that definition, and no one has come up with an improved definition, Strathclyde remains the only conurbation in Scotland, yet effectively, we are about to lose the passenger transport executive that was set up specifically for that conurbation.
	That is a huge shame and I deeply regret it. I only hope that, post the changes, politicians in Edinburgh will be able to work closely with politicians in Glasgow and in the west of Scotland to ensure that some of the infrastructure changes for which we have campaigned for many years, including the Glasgow airport link and Crossrail, are not left to wither on the vine, as some people fear they may be.
	The community rail partnerships have been denigrated by some Conservative Members. I am surprised at that. This week, The Economist rather unkindly referred to the people running community rail partnerships as do-gooders and train nuts. That is a bit harsh. We are talking not about a back-door way of the Government closing under-used rail services, but about the possibility of rural rail services being brought out of mothballs and run by the local community—by people who are extremely interested and enthusiastic about running local rail services. That may not be appropriate for every mothballed service but 40 of those partnerships already exist in Britain. Surely, if they work—it is probably a bit early to decide whether they do—and if they provide what is intended, which is the rejuvenation of small lines with variable passenger numbers, every hon. Member, whatever side of the House they sit on, will welcome it.
	Economies of scale are mentioned in the White Paper and in the Bill. One of the problems with the existing regime of the SRA and the Office of Rail Regulation is that costs are running out of control. As I have said, currently, Ministers have no legislative right to call those costs into line or to question how the ORR is coming up with those sums of money.
	It happens with every capital project in this country and it has become a truism: anything that we buy in Britain costs more than what we would pay for it on the continent, whether we are downloading music, buying a suit or eating in a restaurant. It is accepted that in Britain things cost more money. That does not explain why in Germany the cost of building a new train station is the equivalent of £240,000 but in Britain we would not get much change from £1.5 million.
	The Government must look at that urgently. If we are going to get value for money for our constituents and to make the money that we spend, and that is a lot of money, go as far as possible, we must ensure that every penny is spent wisely. Why are capital projects on the railways costing six to eight times the amount that the same projects cost on the continent? We must look at project supervision, at building standards and at the process for initiating those capital projects.
	As I have said, I warmly support the Bill. There is a level of cynicism among our voters and the general public. Whatever improvements are made in rail services, it is no consolation to be told that a particular franchise has been performing well when one has been stuck on a cold and dirty train for two hours after it broke down. That is a difficult public relations barrier to get over, but I feel quite optimistic about the Bill. Some hon. Members are being unnecessarily oppositionist in their approach to it.

Greg Knight: That does not invalidate my point that there is currently a dip, which my hon. Friends and I find very worrying.
	The clear leadership and direction that Labour promised that the SRA would provide has never remotely looked like happening. Therefore, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk said, we welcome its proposed abolition. The Secretary of State asked why we did not put that in our reasoned amendment. I should tell the Minister—perhaps he can pass it on to the Secretary of State—that when one tables a reasoned amendment, one has to set out reasons why a Bill should not receive a Second Reading; one cannot list parts of it with which one is content. That is why our amendment is silent on that particular issue.
	Our view is that giving more power to politicians is not the way to improve our railways. Likewise, allowing the currently unaccountable Network Rail to have even more control will not improve services. Although we are delighted to see the demise of the SRA, giving more powers to the Department will not help operators to get on with the job of providing a decent and improved rail service. More powers should be given to the train operating companies, which provide the passenger interface, so that they can provide a greater range of services that better meet the needs of travellers. After the political interference that the railways have endured for the past seven years, private industry needs to be given the confidence to invest without further Government meddling.
	I want to comment briefly on rail freight, about which the Bill is strangely silent. With the disappearance of the SRA, no organisation appears to have a statutory obligation to promote or facilitate the growth of rail freight. I ask the Minister whether that is correct. People outside have expressed concerns that, by excluding rail freight from much of the measure, the Government risk leaving freight strategy in a vacuum, with nobody taking responsibility for it.
	The people who contacted me say that if the Bill is enacted in its current form, no official voice will represent freight and fight its corner when network capacity is allocated. Does the Minister accept that the allocation of available capacity to freight and passengers must be assessed fairly and according to value for money and national best interests? The incentive to maximise capacity must surely be equal for freight and passenger services. Their performance should be measured on the amount of freight and passengers they can manage efficiently on the network. No provision attempts to deal with that and I would welcome hearing the reason from the Minister.
	Like the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), I want to comment on rail stock. As hon. Members know, the National Audit Office published a report in February that suggested that new rail rolling stock was being delivered late. It warned that new carriages being introduced into service were less reliable than the old slam-door vehicles that they replaced. Trains not only arrive late at the stations but cannot even arrive from the factory on time. Why should passengers have to put up with old, uncomfortable and sometimes dirty rolling stock while manufacturers take up to two and a half years to deliver new trains? Clearly, people will not use the railways if they are uncomfortable while travelling and feel dirty on arrival at their destination.
	I want briefly to mention access to rail services by disabled people. That point has not been raised in the debate. Although I accept that other legislation is primarily responsible for delivering results on that matter, I would like the Minister to comment on the proposed end date by which all rail vehicles have to be accessible to disabled people. Do the Government have anything new to say about the requirement for improving disability access when rail vehicles are refurbished? Does that happen in every case? The issue is important for many disabled people who would like to travel by rail but currently cannot do so in safety.
	I want to ask the Minister several questions. Clauses 22 to 44—22 provisions—deal with closures. They do not refer to the relevant lines but to the passenger services on them. The Bill includes nothing about what happens to the lines after a service is terminated. If a line currently carries freight or might do so in future, surely it should be kept open, at least for a time, to ascertain whether others want to increase the services or other companies wish to take up and run passenger services. Does the Minister agree?
	Schedule 4 covers the Secretary of State's power to determine the scope and size of the network. There is some concern about its wording, especially proposed new paragraph 1G. It has been suggested that the provision might allow the Secretary of State, in determining the scope and scale of the network, to override private sector contracts, contrary to his undertakings. I do not believe that that is possible or in the Minister's mind but I would welcome an answer to that point.
	In opening the debate, the Secretary of State said that he intended to consult about safety. Will the Minister tell us when he expects the consultations to be concluded? The Secretary of State also referred to the desirable aim of getting track and train companies to work ever closer together but went on to say that the Bill does not provide for that. Will the Minister regularly update the House on progress, perhaps through a periodic written statement?
	On the provisions relating to London, and to giving powers to the current Mayor, I should like to reiterate something that my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk said earlier; we do not support these provisions. Two thirds of all train journeys arrive in or pass through London, leaving millions of passengers from outside the capital facing possible interference by the Mayor in their train services. For example, in an election year, it might suit the Mayor of London—whoever he is—to require a fast, non-stop train to halt at the edge of London to pick up mayoral voters. Passengers might also find their fares being increased to pay for increased expenditure on other services authorised by the Mayor. These are not fanciful concerns. The Bill says:
	"A reference to a London railway passenger service is a reference to . . . a service for the carriage of passengers by railway between places in Greater London and places outside Greater London."
	In our view, that drafting is far too vague. Will the Minister consent to look at it again in Committee, with a view to tightening it up?
	We have heard about only part of the Government's transport policy in this debate. The Secretary of State likes to put himself forward as a benign, friendly, white- haired gentleman—[Hon. Members: "He's Santa!"] I would not call him Santa, although that is certainly a gentleman we think of at this time of year. The House should remember, however, what the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells) said earlier this year. I notice that, following his remarks, that particular Minister has now been shunted off into the sidings in another Department. He said that the only way to end Britain's love affair with the car and to get people to use public transport was to
	"tax people out of their cars in the same way as the authorities have tried to tax people off cigarettes."
	That is the real Labour transport policy. The Government want to use taxation as a weapon to make one form of transport unaffordable, so that people have no choice but to take the train. We believe that it is far better to improve rail services, so that those who can complete their journey by rail actually want to do so. Labour's high-tax transport policy is a kick in the teeth for poor rural families and pensioners, for whom there are no rail services for their essential journeys.
	Overall, this is a bad Bill, but it is not completely without merit. We support the abolition of the SRA and the streamlining of health and safety issues. However, in supporting those proposals, we do not have to accept the vehicle of this Bill. That is why we commend the reasoned amendment to the House.

David Miliband: I welcome this debate and congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing it and on the balanced way in which he tried to deal with the issues nationally as well as in terms of their effect on his constituency.
	I think that the hon. Gentleman would agree that, over the past 10 years or so, the private finance initiative has developed into a strategy for genuine public-private partnership and that that has been a significant development, if not without its difficulties, which I shall try to address. I welcome the opportunity to set out the Government's position.
	It is fair to say that, in the mid-1990s, the private finance initiative was conceived, at least in significant part, as a replacement for public investment. Some saw it as a free lunch—private money supporting national infrastructure. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there is no such thing as a free lunch and, since 1997, the Government have tried to fashion a programme that uses private finance to supplement public investment, not to replace it; that mobilises private sector expertise and experience to serve the public interest; and that sets the incentives for the public and private sectors to serve the interests of taxpayers and citizens.
	The schools example is instructive in that respect. In 1996–97, public investment in the schools infrastructure totalled some £700 million. Next year, in 2005–06, it will be more than £5 billion, with 75 per cent. of it provided conventionally and 25 per cent. in the form of PFI credit. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the "Building Schools for the Future" programme. That is worth more than £2 billion a year, about half of which will be PFI and half conventional procurement.
	Over seven years, more than £7 billion has gone into school repairs, helping schools around the country. The   conception of public-private partnership—PPP—fundamentally changed key aspects of the relationship between the public and private sectors. At the heart of that shift is the idea of the public sector as an intelligent customer of private services. The Government have had a commitment to use public-private partnerships, including projects that were procured under the PFI, to improve the standard of school buildings, as a matter of pragmatism—I believe that the hon. Gentleman used that word—not ideology.
	Such action transforms Departments, agencies and local authorities from being simply the owners and operators of assets into the purchasers of services. The public sector is required critically to examine the full cost of owning an asset throughout its life, not only the initial cost of buying it. That also changes the way in which the private sector thinks about providing the assets. Private firms become long-term providers of services rather than simply asset builders. The private sector can no longer simply walk away from the buildings once they are built.
	I believe that the hon. Gentleman acknowledges that the local authority is the key partner of the private sector in the schools sector. The local authority advertises, negotiates and signs the contract and is subsequently responsible for operating the contract over its life. Local authorities determine whether to undertake a PFI project. However, we recognise that the contracts are long term and therefore different from conventional procurement projects. The Department for Education and Skills and the Treasury have provided and continue to provide substantial support to local authorities that undertake those projects. We also monitor the PFI projects throughout the country.
	The public-private partnerships enable the public sector to use private sector resources to deliver elements of services that the latter, through its skills and expertise, is best placed to provide through a structure in which the private sector puts its capital at risk so that it is paid only when it delivers. I understand that, in the case that the hon. Gentleman raised, delivery has not happened and shortly I want to deal with those circumstances and the sanctions that the public sector has at its disposal when the private sector does not deliver.
	The structure of risk transfer gives the private sector powerful incentives to innovate, and especially to deliver projects on time and to budget, to manage risks more effectively, to maintain assets and provide the specified quality of service for the length of the contract. It is striking that almost 90 per cent. of PFI projects are delivered on time, while under traditional procurement methods, 70 per cent. of projects came in late. Of course, there are benefits to customers, users and taxpayers but they cannot and should not be bought at any price. We, as the public sector, must ensure that when we enter into long-term contracts, we continue to receive value for money for the project's duration.
	The Government's approach is that the PFI should be used only when it can deliver value for money, which cannot be secured at the expense of the terms and conditions of the work force or good design. We are committed to ensuring a level playing field between different procurement routes and we are clear that value for money should be the only criterion that is used to choose between them.
	The total cost of the asset over its life is key to assessing the value for money of a PFI project. That is good public sector practice, whether spending under conventional procurement methods or the PFI. The cost includes the essential services that are required to maintain the asset's value, such as maintenance and repair. In the past, those costs were often excluded from investment appraisals, with the result that opportunities to invest in the design of the building to prevent later maintenance expenditure were overlooked and assets not properly maintained.
	In contrast, at the end of a PFI contract—typically, 25 years—the school is returned to the local authority or governing body, fit for further use. In addition to analysing the whole life cost of the asset, through the appropriate allocation of risk, the PFI ensures that the private sector partner has strong incentives to deliver the services that the public sector requires.
	In PFI projects, the private sector does not get paid until the building is complete and the services are being delivered at the required level. Under PFI, the public sector is guaranteed the specified service. If that is not provided, financial penalties result.
	The hon. Gentleman accurately cited figures for the number of PFI projects that are either open or in train. In 40 schemes, pupils, teachers and head teachers are receiving services. We are trying to learn the lessons of improving procurement and management of PFI projects by local authorities. That is especially important, as our investment in the school estate increases, to ensure that every pound spent is well spent. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the lessons that have been learned in the past five to 10 years. Lessons are being learned on organising contracts, the need to bear down on legal and contracting expenses, the importance of high competence on the public sector side of the negotiating table in putting the contracts together and the need to ensure protection of public money.
	The hon. Gentleman also referred to the importance of standardising contracts, or at least of having standard contracts. He will be pleased to hear that, to aid the process of contracting, we recently issued standards for schools' PFI contracts, to help local authorities coming to the negotiating table to finalise such deals.
	Given the hon. Gentleman's description of events, it would obviously be wrong of me to pretend that everything always goes right in PFI projects, just as it would be wrong to pretend that things always go right in conventional procurement projects. We can make the case, however, that the public sector has stronger sanctions in relation to PFI projects than it does under conventional spend. PFI contracts have contingencies built into them to ensure that, when things do go wrong, either they are put right, or the private sector faces a financial penalty.
	In most PFI contracts, there is more than one shareholder and, critically, a backing group of lending banks with the financial resources to deal with a situation in which a party to the contract has financial difficulties. For PFI contracts in construction, in the event of a construction company being unable to fulfil its responsibilities, it is the responsibility of the banks and other shareholders to replace the contractor with another firm. The cost of doing so will fall on the consortium. If it fails to meet that cost, the procuring authority can terminate the contract, at a significant cost to the consortium.
	If a building contractor encounters serious difficulties, there will be inevitable problems in the procurement of the project, whatever procurement method has been used. In PFI contracts, however, mechanisms are in place to ensure that the banks and shareholders have strong incentives to remedy the situation. It is important to draw a contrast between this and conventional procurement, in which the public sector would be left without such a safeguard. At the end of the day, if everything else fails, the local authority has the final sanction of terminating the contract and providing the services itself.
	As we know, a number of projects are in difficulty as a result of the widely publicised financial problems of Jarvis. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman realises that it would be wholly inappropriate for me to comment on the situation relating to that company. I can, however, comment on the situation in Richmond, and on the Trafalgar school in particular. As he said, the scheme in Richmond involves six fully serviced primary schools through a single contract. He was also right to say that a £50 million project is on the small side when it comes to PFI deals. The contract is for two new schools and four expanded and remodelled schools, and was signed in June 2002. I understand that, in the main, construction work has been completed at four of the six schools.
	A note that I have here tells me that high-quality information and communications technology specification has been a particular feature of this contract, along with flexible classrooms and improved community assets, and that the use of interactive whiteboard technology is having a special impact on the learning experience of the young people involved. That is obviously good to hear. In addition, the working environment for pupils and staff has been much improved.
	However, at the Trafalgar infant and junior schools, a number of items of work, including on the kitchens and the external landscaping, have still to be finished. They have been delayed for some time, and some of the resulting difficulties were brought home to us by the pupils' description of this unacceptable situation through their school council. While the schools might be able to occupy their new buildings, it is obviously unacceptable that they cannot use facilities such as the outdoor play area or the kitchen as they would like to.
	The contract that the authority signed with Jarvis has clauses to cover non-performance and it is up to the authority to invoke those terms. It has, therefore—appropriately, in my view—withheld part of the unitary charge, due to deadlines not being met and progress not being made. We have been informed that there is close co-operation between the local education authority and senior debt and equity providers involved in the project—as well as with Partnerships UK, the national body that handles many of these projects for central Government—in an attempt to resolve the outstanding matters. Those discussions have reached a relatively advanced stage, with a view to restarting the works.
	I completely understand the hon. Gentleman's view that there needs to be real urgency in this process, because every day that goes by is another day of anxiety and annoyance for the teachers and pupils who cannot use their facilities to the full. I am sure that the mere fact that we are holding this debate will make the point to all the parties concerned that a significant educational loss is resulting from the difficulties that have arisen. I know that the hon. Gentleman is also in touch with the LEA, to whom he has copied various letters that he wrote to the Secretary of State to make his points. It seems to me, however, that the authority is on the case, and I hope to see progress.
	The Government are committed to effective public-private partnerships because they can produce clear benefits in the delivery of public services. They can deliver assets that are of high quality, available on time and on budget, and services of an agreed standard. When assets are delivered late or services are poor, the penalties that we have discussed will apply.
	We are also determined to learn from our experience of PFI projects to ensure that as we proceed with major investment every pound spend results in high educational standards, whether lessons are taught in schools built through the PFI scheme or schools built through conventional spend.
	I look forward to discussing these and other matters with the hon. Gentleman in the future.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Eleven o'clock.